Global material handling equipment manufacturer, Claudius Peters, is using generative design tools to inspire improved part shapes that don’t rely on 3D printing. Autodesk’s Asif Moghal took to the main stage to share how.

Oren Harari, a business professor at the University of San Francisco, famously said that, ‘The electric light didn’t come from the continuous improvement of candles’. The quote aptly illustrates the power of generative design, and how embracing the power of modern digital technologies shouldn’t be seen as a project, but an inner attitude.

Autodesk’s senior manufacturing manager, Asif Moghal recently met Thomas Nagel, the chief digital officer at German-headquartered Claudius Peters. The international material handling equipment manufacturer was established more than 100 years ago and Nagel’s role is to ensure the business continues to evolve and adapt over the next 100 years.

According to Moghal, Nagel views digital transformation as an opportunity to redefine Claudius Peters’ relationship with its customers in three broad ways: redefine collaboration with customers, steer away from products to new services, and solve completely different market problems with new technology.

Nagel was quoted as saying: “Yesterday’s know-how provides few answers to the questions of today and tomorrow, which means we need new skills to learn and allow new ways of thinking, new structures and vastly improved communication. We need to embrace cultural change to become an agile company in all areas.”

To experience just what was possible, Claudius Peters partnered with Autodesk on a handful of projects, one of which centered on generative design.

What is generative design?

Put simply, generative design allows computers to do the heavy lifting, freeing up engineers and designers to truly innovate.

By sharing with the computer what it is you want to achieve, and the parameters or constraints involved, the power and scalability of the cloud allows thousands of design possibilities to be created. This allows you to discover what the trade-offs are between them and ultimately arrive at the optimum design.

What’s most exciting, is that generative design isn’t held back by the limits of human creativity or bias:

LEFT: a traditionally, human-designed seat buckle | RIGHT: the same assembly generatively designed

For their generative design project, Claudius Peters choose to re-engineer one of their internal clinker cooler components with a focus on reducing cost and weight.

Are you a UK design or manufacturing SME? Do you want to make better products, sell more and generate greater profit? Do you believe that digital technologies can help you achieve this?

Then join the Future of British Manufacturing, an initiative focused on helping you make better products, increase sales and generate greater profits.

Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit has been bringing together senior industry executives for more than a decade, and is the biggest manufacturer-to-manufacturer conference in the country.

It is the ‘jewel in the crown’ of Digital Manufacturing Week, an annual celebration of UK manufacturing excellence that takes place every November in Liverpool. This year saw 887 delegates attend Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit (up 45% on 2017) and 5,322 visitors to Digital Manufacturing Week (up 36% on 2017).